Jump to content

Symbolic Links on Server


pixel40
Go to solution Solved by pixel40,

Recommended Posts

I am having problems getting Symbolic Links to work on Windows 7/8/8.1.

 

My movie collection is in the thousands, so I store the movie collection and folder structure on an SSD for faster access. The movie files use symbolic links  (file shortcuts) to the real movies on larger disks on the same computer where the Media Browser 3 Server is installed (Version  3.0.5050.37565).

Everything worked perfectly with the MediaBrowser Plugin in WMC on windows 7 or 8 pro.

 

  An example Log file gives me this info...

Debug, BaseItem, Found shortcut at \\192.168.1.2\MoviesTest\2 Days in Paris (2007)\2 Days in Paris.lnk
Warn, BaseItem, Unable to find linked item at \\192.168.1.2\Movies4\2 Days in Paris.mkv              
 
(This is the problem Part, if I replace the shortcut link with the real file, everything is great)
 
All my paths use UNC format.
 
The shortcut movie file works as it should within the file System, eg double clicking opens up the real Movie.
When viewing the collection in the MediaBrowser 3 client, only the movie posters show, nothing else.
As soon as I replace the movie shortcut link with the real movie eveything works.
 
Any suggestions would be much appreciated
 
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Our shortcut support is no the same as MB2. The path being pointed to must also be defined in the library. In short, your setup is not going to work in mb3.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would also add that your setup is not really necessary in MB3.  Having your actual media information on an SSD is probably not of much benefit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The reason I did this, is because I used the database from "Extreme Movie Manager" as my as my movie Collection.

The Movie Collection already had shortcuts within each movie folder, and that way the actual movie could be anywhere on the network, and still work. Of course when the movies moved, the shortcuts would break.

 

I ended up writing my own program to create dynamic links automatically for any movie I had. This approach worked fine while on a particular sub-domain, but of course each computer had to have it's own collecton database.

I have just always liked to keep the movies separate form any other data, because the movie doesn't change, database structures do, especially accross different systems.

 

Also, it is much easier for backup purposes to just have the movies as a separate file.

 

I do love the way MB3 uses a Server model for centralized access, which just makes database managing much for efficient.

 

Thanks for the help, I will write a progam to go through my collection and merge all my movies and database together.

Going through thousands of movies manually would not be fun. :-)

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I guess I am an Idiot after all. Symbolic links do seem to work, shortcuts don't.

 

Shortcuts are from windows 95 days, and actually take up a small amount of space (1 or 2 kilobytes).

True symbolic links are at the file System level and therefore are supported at a much lower level, they have 0 byte size, and the size of the file appears the same as the original movie file.

So everything should work with using proper Symbolic Links, I will just have to alter my program to fix my idiotic lack of knowledge.

I will report when I have found the time to alter my program.

The command line version for creating proper Symbolic links is mklink /D /H /J [LINK NAME] [TARGET]

without using the /D /H or /J arguments, which are for directory, hard file, and directory junction links.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Solution

I have successfully fixed my movie Collection up with Symbolic links.

It actually works, on Media Browser classic client in Windows Media Center on Windows 8 Pro.

Some movies would not initially play, with the external VLC Player, but I used the fsutil command to fix that, something to do with "remote to remote symbolic links" being disabled.

More info here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/junfeng/archive/2012/05/07/the-symbolic-link-cannot-be-followed-because-its-type-is-disabled.aspx

 

My Nokia Lumia windows 8 phone also works with the Media Browser 3 App.

 

Thank you, Thank you, to all you wonderful programers, who made this possible.

I am so pleased I will have to make another Donation :-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...